Clara's Birthday
by Woody Allen Jesus
Summary: Clara fancies a break from adventures. She celebrates her birthday by spending the evening in with the Doctor, and reflects on their relationship together. Whoufflé fluff. Please R&R.


Clara was comfortable with the balance of her two lives. On the one hand she had her ordinary life. She babysat, she did her teacher training, she read, she watched television, she allowed herself to stay normal. That was a good, solid foundation, a base on which to place her other life of chaos and adventure. On that hand, she had the Doctor and his snogbox, and their madcap life together. Clara loved that. She loved the thrills, the excitement of new discoveries, new worlds and new species. Most of all she loved him, with his conceited smile and floppy haircut and ridiculous chin. But she couldn't have done it 24/7. It was nice to come home at the end of that to her own bed for the night, to wake up the next morning and know that nobody was trying to kill her and that nobody needed saving, where the worst perils she faced was her alarm not going off or discovering she'd forgotten to buy milk and would have to have toast today. So Clara was happy. Happy to allow things to continue the way they were.

Gradually, though, as she'd gotten closer to the Doctor, he'd begun to hold a greater presence in her everyday life as well. He'd put in the occasional appearance there, never staying that long and never demanding anything of her, but enough that she felt truly that they were not just travelling companions, but close friends as well. Clara couldn't help her attraction to him. He was brilliant and arrogant, oodles of fun and terribly exciting, but underneath that, there was more, depths of emotion that stretched back further than she could possibly comprehend. It would be a long time, she thought, before she truly uncovered just who he was. But she fancied him. She fancied the Doctor. That was the only word she could use to describe it. She hadn't used words like "fancy" and "crush" since she'd been at school, but there was no better way to describe it. She was happy to be friends with him, but oh, she wished it could be more.

And then suddenly, it was. She supposed she shouldn't have been too surprised to find her foppish companion felt the same way, given how much trouble he'd gone to in finding her, but it came as a shock to the system the first time he'd kissed her, on her front doorstep late one evening after a day of running from the Ninth Roman Legion. Without either of them really saying anything about it, they just sort of became an item. Clara was rubbish at romance- she got her fair share of prospective suitors, she supposed, but she was absolutely awful at dates and she could never hold down a relationship. But with the Doctor, it felt like the easiest thing in the world. There was nothing boring in their relationship- it switched seamlessly from breath-taking action to gentle intimacy, with scarcely a lull in proceedings in between. It did mean, though, that he took a greater interest in her ordinary life, and whilst she had accepted the surreal aspect of having an alien for a boyfriend, she wasn't sure the rest of her mundane social circle would be so understanding. So they kept things fairly private, which took a bit of effort, hence the surprise of her friends when upon being asked about any ideas for her birthday, Clara told them she had already made plans.

Those plans began at roughly six thirty when the Doctor showed up at her house with a bottle of wine and an endearingly sweet smile. "Come on in," Clara said, bustling back into the living room. "You're earlier than I expected."

"Perks of having a time-travelling spaceship," he replied nonchalantly. "So, where we are off to tonight, then? Your birthday, you choose. You know, there's a planet in the Isop Galaxy with a city made entirely out of glass. About two million years from now they've created an artificial moon orbiting it that lines up to block the sun's light so it always looks like it's sunset. Terrifically romantic-"

"I have a better idea," Clara said.

"Go on, then."

"Well, how about 2013, Earth, England, London. This house, to be exact." Clara looked at him. "What do you think?"

He looked baffled. "But you live here already."

"Yes, I do."

He looked even more baffled. "Clara, we could go anywhere in time and space. Literally, anywhere."

"Exactly," she replied. "So wherever we go, it won't be that special. Now, here's what I'd like. To stay in on my birthday with my boyfriend, have a nice dinner, relax, and just be normal for a night."

She watched his reaction. He seemed a little unconvinced, but slowly he nodded. "Alright. Whatever you want. This evening is all about you."

"Thank you." She picked up the bottle of wine that he'd set down on the coffee table. "Where'd you get this?" Clara was not much of a wine person. She wasn't much of a drinker in general, truth be told, though she was willing to try anything he recommended. _Chateau Lafleur,_ it said. _Pomerol, France. 1950._

"Picked it up on the way here," he replied casually. "Took a detour through Bordeaux. I hear it's very good, though I'm usually more of a hot chocolate kind of fellow."

She smiled slowly at this, and went to put the bottle in the fridge. As she was getting up, she felt his arms wrap round her from behind and her smile broadened. "You're in a good mood," she remarked.

He nuzzled her neck gently. "I should hope so. You've put me in a good mood."

"You don't mind staying in, then?"

"Not at all. It just means I get you all to myself."

Clara titled her head upwards to grin at him. His expression was hilariously sultry. Even if she'd always found him dashing, it had taken quite some time to fully adjust to seeing him as a lover- he was on the surface one of the least sexual people you could meet, honestly motivated and respectful in a disrespectful kind of way. The first few times they'd fooled around, she'd had to stop just because she was giggling so much. Even now, exchanges like these made her almost want to pinch herself just to check that it was in fact real.

She turned round slowly to face him. He leaned down towards her, but proceedings were halted as a timer pinged loudly in the vicinity. "Hang on," Clara said, turning towards the oven. "That'll be the garlic potatoes-"

She stooped down and opened the door to check on them. The Doctor looked at her with an expression of incredulity. "You're cooking?" He sounded appalled. "You can't cook on your birthday! That's nothing short of scandalous."

"It's what I wanted to do." The potatoes still looked like they needed another few minutes. She shut the oven door and stood up again. "Look, we could go out and have an adventure, and it might be fun, but I really would like to do something a bit more personal. So yes, I'd like to cook for you on my birthday. Is that alright?"

He frowned indecisively. "I suppose," he conceded. "But it's your _birthday._ You should be entitled to be lazy on it."

"I don't mind cooking," she said lightly. "Cooking's fine. The rest of the stuff around here is the problem. I feel like I could do with a domestic helper sometimes."

"I _had_ been imagining you in a French maid outfit from time to time."

She smiled. "Keep dreaming. It's my birthday, not yours."

"Which is why you shouldn't be working," he repeated. "I've never exerted one iota of effort on _any_ of mybirthdays, and I've had considerably more of them."

"What day do you celebrate it on? Do you have more than one?" Clara asked. They had only shared one of his, in fact, up until that point. "You know, one fort the day you were actually born, one for the day you regenerated into who you are now?"

He seemed baffled. "No," he said, as if this should have been obvious. "I've only been born on one day. I'm still the same person, just I happen to now have better dress sense and a pointier chin."

Clara smiled in exasperation. For someone so learned and wise and knowledgeable about all the universe had to offer, dating him was at times a most confusing endeavour. At heart, he was of course an enormous child, even if he wasn't as carefree as he liked to pretend. "Alright. If it makes you feel any better, I'm planning on doing nothing for the rest of the evening. With the possible exception of you. Fair enough?"

"Fair enough." He kissed her fleetingly, not long enough for her to even enjoy the moment. She'd have to get him back for that later. "Sorry if I'm fussing too much. It's just… well, it's been a quite long time since I've had anybody to fuss over."

Clara blushed just a little. He returned to the living room, leaving her on her own for the moment. Someone to fuss over. That sounded nice to her. The Doctor had many acquaintances, allies and contacts across the universe, but she hadn't seen much evidence of too many real friends. She gathered he'd had plenty in the past, but one way or another he'd been alone when she'd met him for the first time. The Doctor didn't like follow-ups, didn't like consequences. He did what he'd come to do and then he was gone again. The people he met came and went. There were no constants. Except for her.

She and he were immensely close. She saw sides of him that nobody else got to see, and her true nature didn't get to come out until she was away from her mundane life after he'd whisked her away across the stars for another night of wonder and adventure. Her ordinary life was alright, but it and she needed the Doctor to give it that all-important spark, to make it more than just getting up in the morning and going to bed at night, and trying to pad out the hours in between with something productive. But she was slowly realising that, in fact, he needed her just as much as she needed him. It troubled her sometimes to think of him alone for all that time before she'd turned up, only with his thoughts to keep him company. But, all the same… well, maybe it was needy of her, but she quite liked the idea that the Doctor needed her. It made her feel rather special.

After another few minutes, everything was ready to be served. Cooking for the Doctor had presented a bit of a conundrum- they rarely if ever ate together so she was unsure if perhaps a Time Lord's tastes differed from a human's. In the end, she'd fallen back on this- one of her cousins who made a hobby out of cooking had sent her a recipe for garlic potatoes and diced chicken in a mustard sauce a couple of Christmases ago, and she usually produced it on any occasion she was required to make something remotely nice.

Sitting down to dinner with the Doctor was a little strange. Dates to them generally involved epic journeys across the universe, peril and intrigue and mystery. Ordinary little things like this were mundane in comparison, and yet exciting in an entirely different way. The adventures had become part and partial of their time together. Little touches like these made it feel more real.

The first few minutes passed without too much being said. After already beginning, Clara suddenly remembered the wine and hastily went to uncork it and pour them each a glass. She had so little interest in wine that anything vintage was probably wasted on her, though in truth she wasn't paying any attention to flavour. Her attention was entirely fixed on the Doctor. It was silly of her to be this nervous, she knew- she wasn't trying to impress him, certainly not tonight, but it was a rare thing for them to have an evening to themselves in the ordinary, everyday world in which someone wasn't after her for something. What would he think of it? She became acutely aware of the silence. It embarrassed her terribly. Didn't they have anything normal to talk about?

"This is lovely, by the way." He gestured to the plate. "Did you come up with the recipe yourself?"

"Oh, God, no," she replied, relieved he'd spoken first. "No, I got it off my cousin. She doesn't do anything but cook in her spare time, anytime you're at her house-"

She caught herself. She was prattling on. That wasn't any better than silence. Come on, what could they talk about? He wasn't up to date with current events or pop culture, his life existed in a flux of different time zones. _Come on, think Clara. It's just a conversation, how hard can that possibly be-_

Her train of thought was halted as he spoke again. "You look beautiful."

Clara blushed a tiny bit. She had tried not to put too much effort into her appearance, but had found herself in front of the mirror five or six times that day, fretting over tiny adjustments, debating over use of eye shadow and swapping her outfit from casual to sexy to back to casual again. Casual was better for her. She couldn't really pull off sexy in her mind. You had to be tall, svelte and willowy for that, whereas she was short and petite and at best huggable. "Thanks," she said. "The girls from my teaching placement all clubbed together to get me this voucher for a day at a beauty spa-"

"That was nice of them. I did think you looked different. Brighter, I suppose you might say."

Clara smiled thinly. "I haven't used it yet."

"Oh." He blushed scarlet. The Doctor never blushed. He cared too little about social convention to ever be self-conscious. Indeed, he was as out of place in society as she was in any of the fantasy worlds he took her to. And yet something had kept drawing him back towards planet Earth and its inhabitants, something kept him fascinated with the human race, and yet…

"Is it weird," Clara said slowly, "that the two of us don't really have anything in common?"

He raised his eyebrows. "Nothing in common?"

Clara nodded slowly. "Well, not _nothing._ I mean we both breathe oxygen, I suppose…"

His eyebrows remained arched. Clara sighed. "Okay, you know what I mean. I grew up watching Friends and listening to Oasis and hoping someone other than Pete Sampras would win Wimbledon that year. And then there's you, and…" She paused, looking for the words.

"And I didn't?" he suggested.

"Well, yes," she said. That still didn't seem quite sufficient to her. "I mean, you've seen everything. I don't know what Time Lords do as kids, if PE is fighting Daleks or something or if the first boy in the class to own his own TARDIS gets all the attention from girls, or what-"

She stopped momentarily. He was laughing hysterically and so she waited for him to regain his composure with a sigh. "What? What's so funny?"

"Fighting Daleks-" he paused, shaking his head in disbelief. "Clara, I wish you'd been _my_ teacher."

"Okay, very funny. But still…" She thought about how she could say the next bit without sounding self-pitying. "Well, you've done so much more than I have. You've got so much to talk about. You've seen all of time, just about. Everything interesting I've done, you were there for. I feel like me talking about me is always going to be boring."

Drat. That had sounded self-indulgently tragic. What was she complaining about, exactly? That she had a wonderful dynamic boyfriend from beyond the stars who had a wealth of interesting stories to tell? No, that wasn't the problem. The problem was she couldn't realistically hope to be good enough for someone like that, and maybe, just maybe, now she'd said it, there was the dreadful possibility that he might notice it too.

Instead, he leaned across to her reassuringly. "Clara, since I first met you I don't believe I've been bored for one second." His old eyes were sincere. She initially found it a little bit of a struggle to hold his gaze, but the softness of his tone prompted her to look into them. "I've seen my fair share of things. In fact, I've seen a few people's fair share of things. More than their fair share of things. And do you know what? It stops being fulfilling, after a while. Planets and races and cosmoses all start blending together, when you're on your own, trotting through them, sightseeing. But you… you make it exciting. Seeing your face when we step out onto the surface of a new world, or watching you look at me like I have two heads when I try to explain something about time travel, that's what I do it all for. For you."

A little warm glow spread throughout her body. Clara smiled tentatively. "Yeah?"

"Of course," he said assuredly. "Most of the time all that waffle about space-time and relative dimensions I just make up on the spot. It sounds impressive and I love seeing it baffle you."

Clara giggled. "What, actually?"

He nodded enthusiastically. "A-ha. I threw out the TARDIS' manual years ago. Couldn't get through another page of it."

Clara grinned. "So you don't think there's anything wrong with us, do you?"

He shook his head. "Not at all. We don't always have things to talk about because we haven't lived through the same things. Alright. Fine. All that means is that there's more about you I get to find out. It's nice to have someone who's had a normal life for a change."

She smiled tentatively. "Maybe I didn't mean we have _nothing_ in common. We… we have the _big_ things in common, I suppose. The things that actually matter."

"And anything we don't, I've got a reason to learn about."

She brushed a hand against his cheek. "You're the sweetest person I've ever known."

He sniffed modestly, as if to say, "well, I suppose since you said it…" He looked at her slowly, expression now slightly awkward. "Since we're being honest, it does make me feel just a teensy bit awkward at times. You've had a whole life of building something. Me, I'm a dabbler in history, I never stay anywhere for too long. Never long enough to make anything that matters."

Clara leant closer towards him. "Maybe you just need someone who'll move with you, then."

He smiled shyly. "Maybe."

"And you're right," she added. "It'll be nice, finding out more about each other. Even if I didn't get to share the first bit of my life with you…"

She hesitated. The next few words would be rather momentous.

"…I want to share the rest of it."

They held each other's gaze for the moment. His, for a second, looked a tiny bit sad. Then it glimmered with affection, and something almost like gratitude. "And I'll love being there for it."

They were only a few inches apart. Clara leaned in closer still. He reached out towards her…

Then something blared out, hideously loudly, loudly enough to shatter the moment into a thousand pieces, a shrill, electronic bleeping that a moment later Clara recognised as her own ringtone. "Sorry," she mumbled. She stepped away from the table and pulled out her phone. It was her teaching course leader. "I have to take this, I'm really sorry," she apologised. She slid the button across to accept the call and put the phone to her ear. "Hello?"

The call ended up taking nearly ten minutes. Somehow they'd confused some of her submission dates somewhere in the pipeline. She spent most of the ten minutes arguing in circular fashion about responsibility and hearing the phrase 'it's your career that's at stake, not mine' trotted out several times. Finally she managed to repel the onslaught of disapproval long enough to agree to sort things out in person tomorrow, and wearily hung up feeling that if this training period became any harder she was going to end up releasing her students from their study duties out of sheer sympathy.

Clara trotted back tiredly to the table. The Doctor was reading a television magazine in her absence, open at an article on The Thick of It. "Having seen Downing Street, this is ominously accurate," he said aloud as she returned. "Blimey, look at this fellow's eyebrows, though." He pointed to a photograph of Malcolm Tucker. "Deeply troubling."

He looked up at her, and his face pinched with concern. She mustn't have been hiding her discontent very well. "What's wrong?"

"It's nothing," she said dismissively. "Just… work stuff."

"Couldn't they pick one night of the year to leave you alone?"

She shrugged. "Not how the world works. And, I suppose, when you tell people you don't have plans, they assume you don't have plans."

She dearly hoped that hadn't sounded taciturn. It must have betrayed something, at any rate, as his expression didn't mellow at all. "Why did you say you didn't have plans?" he asked her.

"Because you're my secret." There was a hole in the cuff of her cardigan, she realised then. She began fiddling with it as she continued to speak. "Honestly, I'd love to shout it from the rooftops, who you are and what we do. But we just can't. And I can't lie to everybody about who you are, so the best thing to do is just not to say anything. Which does unfortunately mean that much as I love having you in my life… the rest of the world won't really accommodate it."

She took a quick look at him. He looked determined to say something, but was evidently short on words. "Don't," she said, before he said anything. "You don't have to say anything. I'm being really mopey, and you don't have to indulge that."

"I'm your boyfriend, if I didn't indulge you moping what good would I be?"

"It's fine, honestly."

He nodded slowly. "Okay. But everyone's entitled to a good mope now and then."

She didn't reply. He offered to clear up, which she gratefully accepted, and once that was done the two of them retired to the living room again. Clara kicked off her shoes and snuggled up against him on the sofa, placing her feet on the armrest. This made her feel significantly better, and for once she sighed in contentment rather than exasperation as she rested her head against his shoulder and he lazily brushed back a few strands of hair from her forehead. She had a few movies taped they could watch. Did the Doctor watch television? She couldn't realistically expect him to be up to date with all her serials. Or worse, what if he'd already seen future series and would spoil all the plot twists for her?

"Doctor, do you watch TV?" she asked, tilting her face upwards to look at him.

"Do I watch TV?" He looked astounded. "Of course I watch TV, Clara. Along with the Trojan Horse and those little strings attached to hotel room teabags, it's one of the greatest things this planet has produced."

"What do you watch?"

He shrugged. "Lots of things," he said casually. "Tell me, I can't quite keep track of years- has Under Manhattan started airing yet?"

Clara blinked. "What?"

"Under Manhattan?" He grinned. "Now that I think of it, it would be a bit early. You'll love it. It's this wonderful series about an inventor in swing-era New York that solves mysteries with his natural ingenuity."

"Sounds exciting."

They did try and watch an episode of Sherlock together after that. The Doctor kept up a nit-picky running commentary throughout, which Clara, highly amused, ended up paying more attention to than the actual show itself. "Well, that's ridiculous," he said, gesturing to the television. "That one in the old-fashioned trench coat is obviously the culprit. I can see that and I haven't even been paying attention."

"Doctor, that's the title character. He's the one trying to solve the case."

"The one trying to solve the case _is_ the culprit?" He shook his head in wonderment. "Now that is a good plot twist, I'll give them that. Oh, for goodness'-" He swore irritably. "That bomb had a thirty second fuse and it started counting down a good minute and a half ago, if this was real life he'd be dead and the case would go unsolved forevermore."

"That's because it's not all shot in real-time."

"Well, if they could tell you which bits are in real-time and which bits aren't, that would be extraordinarily helpful," he said grumpily. "Who wrote this nonsense, anyway?"

"I don't know. Somebody named Steven."

"Well, if you ever get talking to him, tell him he's awful."

Clara rolled her eyes in mock irritation. "Why would I be talking to him?"

"I don't know. He's a human, you're a human, you probably have him on Facebook or something."

Clara poked him with her foot. He smirked deviously and suddenly spun her so she lay flat on her back on the sofa, looking up at him. "That reminds me," he said, "I haven't given you your present yet."

Clara looked up at him with a smile. "Is this your way of saying this is my present?"

"Is that what you think?"

She rolled her eyes again. "You can't give me sex as a birthday present."

"Why not? You did for me. You even did… well, you know. The thing."

"What thing?"

"You know, the thing you do sometimes."

"Oh," Clara said with recognition. "Yes, but that's different."

"Why is it different?"

"It just is."

He grinned. "No, I'm not getting you sex as a birthday present. I'll go get your present, it's out in the TARDIS."

Clara wrinkled her nose. "Is that your way of saying you forgot to get me something and you're off to do whatever the Time Lord equivalent is of racing down to the petrol station to pick up some discount flowers and the cheapest card you can find?"

He laughed and got up off the sofa, producing the TARDIS key from his pocket. "Wait here."

"I'm not going anywhere," she replied teasingly.

He disappeared out the front door. Clara lay there grinning to herself. Where would she be without her beloved lunatic? God, dating the Doctor was _fun._ He was great for cuddles. Him being so much taller than her made snogging a little bit of a challenge but he was wonderfully easy to lie against, and her head tucked just perfectly in against his shoulder. She could spend every night like this, no bother. Then again… she would have to start telling people fairly soon that she was attached, if she didn't want to seem like she was rejecting their company for no reason. Her grin faded somewhat. She imagined with horror introducing the Doctor to her friends, or worse still to her colleagues and course tutor. He wouldn't be remotely suitable to have around children, even if he was a massive child himself. He'd give them all terrible ideas.

The bang of the front door opening and closing jolted her back to reality. Clara sat up as he re-entered the room, holding a large bag which he passed to her. Excitably, she opened it up and reached inside. She could scarcely imagine what the Doctor might be getting her. Some exotic treasure from across the universe, perhaps? It was square-shaped and fairly light, whatever it was. Who knew what it might-

She pulled it out and looked at it, taking in what it was. Huh.

"A box of chocolates?" she said.

He nodded. "A-ha."

Clara tried not to show her disappointment too much. "Right," she said slowly. "Just… well, we have known each other for almost a year, and I was expecting something a little more…"

She bit her lip, then sighed again. "Oh, I'm being so ungrateful. You didn't have to get me anything, it's the thought that counts, I can't believe I'm being so-"

She stopped speaking abruptly as she noticed he was once more consumed by a fit of laughter. Clara began to smile. "You're joking, aren't you?"

He nodded slowly. "Did you really-" He paused, getting himself back under control. "You really thought that was all I'd got you, didn't you?"

He was confusing sometimes. She waited patiently for him to stop laughing, and when he finally did he extended his hand towards her. "Come on. Your actual present involves a trip in the TARDIS, but you'll need to come with me this time."

Excitedly, Clara took his hand and followed him outside. There was a little bit of a chill in the air, and she stuck close to him as he led her inside the blue snogbox and shut the doors behind them. "Alright. We aren't going terribly far, just a short trip still on Earth and staying with the same time. Won't take a second."

He pulled a lever, and around them the familiar groaning, wheezing sound of the ship in motion filled the console room. No sooner had it begun than it was over, and they were standing still again. "After you," the Doctor said, gesturing with a smile towards the doors.

Clara proceeded cautiously towards them. She genuinely had no idea what to expect on the other side of them. Slowly she opened the doors and stepped outside. The sight that greeted her was something of a surprise. They seemed to be in some kind of cave- light-coloured rock surrounded the ship, which itself was curiously ringed by some kind of pale blue glow. From outside the cave's walls, the faint sound of lapping waves could be heard. Opposite the ship, most curiously of all, stood a spiral staircase stretching upwards through a hole in the ceiling.

"Where are we?" she asked curiously.

"Iceland," the Doctor replied. "Ellidaey Island. Now go on, up you go." He gestured to the spiral staircase.

Hesitantly, Clara proceeded towards it and began to climb the steps. These, too, were made from some light-coloured rock. Slowly she followed the staircase, until it emerged through the roof of the cave, into the chamber above.

"Oh my goodness," she breathed.

Around her was something too beautiful for words. She found herself in a chamber about the size of the downstairs of her house, the walls, floor and ceiling of which were all permeated with what looked like millions of clear blue crystals, winding paths through the stone that spiralled and criss-crossed the whole way around the room. In the room was everything one could have expected in a five-star hotel room- double bed, dresser and storage space, lamps, light fittings, full-length mirror, what looked like an en suite bathroom open in an alcove to one side and all bells and whistles of a luxurious lifestyle. Most spectacularly of all, at the end of the chamber was a view that looked out over a stunning ocean view, a glorious strip of water above which hung a mauve sky bursting with stars. It was a penthouse apartment plucked out of a city and deposited inside the heart of nature.

"Good, isn't it?" Clara spun round as the Doctor appeared at the top of the spiral staircase. He was smiling in the way of someone who knew they'd found something brilliant and was finally getting to show it off. "It took a while to prepare, but fortunately I'm rather good at arriving ahead of time. What do you think?"

"Oh my God," Clara said softly.

He made a sweeping gesture to the room around them. "This is one of the most remote settlements on Earth. I was looking for the perfect nice and secluded spot. Once I found it, I decided to make a few modifications to it. The furniture and everything was easy enough to get hold of- not so easy plumbing in the en suite, mind you, but I'm nothing if not stubborn- and the crystals I added as a little decorative touch. Copper sulphate, which funnily enough in their liquid form conduct electricity. I wired the whole place in to a panel in the first chamber. So long as the TARDIS is parked in the chamber beneath here, this place has got electricity, central heating, air conditioning, the whole shebang, plus a basic force field to shield it from the elements. You might say it exists in its own little bubble."

Clara simply stared. She was too stunned to really take it all in. The Doctor stepped over to her, taking her hands in his. "I just thought, since it's not always so easy for us to be alone together without putting the width of the universe between us and the rest of your life, that maybe I needed to do something about it. So, here it is. Our own little retreat, one little private spot on this planet that belongs to us and nobody else, where we can shoot off to whenever we want." He grinned at her. "Happy birthday, Clara."

Yep. Dating the Doctor was fun alright. Clara grabbed the front of his jacket and pulled him down towards her. He seemed a little caught off-guard as their lips met, but kissed her back unquestioningly, until finally they had to surface for air. "It's perfect," Clara whispered. "Absolutely perfect." And it was. It was the most quaint and beautiful setting she could imagine. It was away from the hustle and bustle of everyday life, and yet she could firmly call it something of her own. No. Not just something of hers. Something of _theirs._ For them, the Doctor had created the perfect love-nest.

He blushed a little at her words, though looked rather pleased with himself. "Not perfect," he said hurriedly. "I still haven't got the ceiling fan working yet-"

She shushed him with an effortless motion. "I love it," she said. "Honestly, it couldn't be more brilliant."

He continued to look gratified to the point of embarrassment. "Another thing," he said, with a gesture to the open space and the sea below them. "Since we're this far off the beaten track, there's no Internet connectivity out here. We're quite firmly outside the twenty-first century."

Clara smiled. "That just makes it more perfect," she said, truthfully. Her voice dipped lower. "It means no interruptions. No distractions. You're all mine."

She let her eyelids drop seductively. The eye shadow had been a good call. Being lascivious didn't come very naturally to her, she was too awkward for it and being sexy and wearing a cardigan were two circles that simply did not overlap on the Venn diagram of aesthetic decisions, but she did love to see the expression her efforts put on his face. She sidled up to him leisurely, maintaining eye contact the entire time, unfastening a few buttons as she did so. " _All_ mine," she repeated. She was now right up against him. She reached up and undid his bowtie, holding his gaze as she did so. The bowtie was always the first thing that went, for some reason. It seemed the most Doctorish part of him.

He returned her look with a dastardly one of his own. "How naughty of you, Clara Oswald."

"A-ha." She smirked at him. "Oh, and it's my birthday, so this time _you're_ doing the thing."

He arched an eyebrow. "I am?"

"Oh, yes. It's my birthday, remember, I can ask for whatever I want."

"Fair enough." He swept her without warning off her feet, abruptly enough that Clara shrieked and laughed at the same time. He carried her across and deposited her on the bed. "But if you laugh during it, I'm not doing it."

She did laugh then, in fact. Yes, dating the Doctor was fun, alright. Not just fun, though. He was perfect for her. Sometimes she needed the everyday world for a bit of respite. But… sometimes she needed him for a bit of respite too. Her last clear-headed thought of the night, as she dragged him down on top of her, was that in time for his next birthday, she was going to pick herself up the most revealing French maid outfit she could find.


End file.
